


Certainly not

by feyrelay



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Best Friends, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, MIT Era, Moodboards, Roommates, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-18 22:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20646776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feyrelay/pseuds/feyrelay
Summary: Jim Rhodes, college man, contemplates his roommate. Shortfic with Moodboard.





	Certainly not

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ceealaina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceealaina/gifts).

As James Rhodes is first getting to know the sarcastic little freshman nerd that, for some reason, won the student housing lottery and was given a place in one of the nicest student houses on campus, he has a lot of questions. Yeah, it starts with, ‘How old are you?’ but goes quickly from there to, ‘A _ real _ butler, are you for real?’ to, ‘But _ why _ can’t you just take things when people hand them to you?’ to ‘Will anyone miss him if I kill him?’

It’s not just that the kid clearly needs a friend. It’s not that James Rhodes particularly _ enjoys _ pulling Tony away from tables too packed with half-naked coeds for Tony’s formidable but inebriated mind to recognize that he’s the only one contributing blow to the table’s communal lines, that he’s the only one laughing at his engineering puns, that he’s the only one there who is under eighteen.

Certainly not. But he does it anyway.

He does it, and he doesn’t harp about the blood Tony gets on the sink when he doesn’t even shave. He doesn’t harp on Tony’s distaste for Rhodey’s cast iron pans. He doesn’t harp on the fact that they have a whole phone line when Tony only ever talks to his butler.

Before he knows it, he’s got a nickname and an invite to the Stark household for Christmas.

“S’just my friend, Rhodey. Yes, Jarvis, we’ll be there by the twenty-first,” Tony says down the line of the telephone he made from their toaster and a few odds and ends. He’d paid for the line to be installed, too, when Rhodey had just looked at him like, _ what, am I made out of money? _

Sure, Rhodey appreciates that things tend to get done, get paid for, get paid _ off _ when it comes to Tony, but. That’s not why they’re friends. Sure, James Rhodes has big plans of finishing his specialized degree so he can enter the military as an officer, but.

He doesn’t need friends to make that happen. He can do it on his own. He’s put two-and-two together by now and realized that the man behind the pale scar of a burn on Tony’s hand is the same as the one behind the legend of Captain America. James Rhodes wants nothing from that man, wants nothing from Tony that isn’t _ Tony’s _ to give and not his father’s.

But Christmas. Christmas he can do. He can do chestnuts roasting on an open fire, and hot pans of gingerbread, and being handed gifts when there’s no way of telling what’s inside. He can do that so Tony doesn’t have to. Let everything move from Rhodey’s hands to his.

If Rhodey finds himself thinking of the smooth glide of that burn on Tony’s palm, palming over Rhodey's back, neck, scalp, face, anywhere just as long as it's a good touch, a touch that _doesn't hurt_, a touch that Tony _wants_, then. Who has to know? Certainly not the military. If he finds himself wanting to be scrutinized, stripped, parted out, and remade into something new—toaster to telephone—then who has to know? Certainly not Howard Stark.

Certainly not.


End file.
